Easter(n) images

The new representations of Christ leave out the Incarnation | Gene Edward Veith

To mark the new millennium, the liberal-leaning National Catholic Reporter sponsored a worldwide competition for a new artistic representation of Jesus Christ, with a $2,000 prize.

The winner was"Jesus of the People" by Vermont artist Janet McKenzie, who portrayed this new Jesus as robed, crowned in thorns, and black. Most strikingly, He is a woman. (The face itself is androgynous, but the model for the painting, as we are continually told, was a woman.)

One of the judges was Sister Wendy Beckett, the cloistered nun whose television series The Story of Painting (BBC) has become a high point of educational TV. Sister Wendy liked the "haunting image of a peasant Jesus-dark, thick-lipped, looking out on us with ineffable dignity, with sadness but with confidence. Over His white robe He draws the darkness of our lack of love, holding it to Himself, prepared to transform all sorrows if we will let Him." She told the National Catholic Reporter that she saw a "symbolic sheaf of wheat" and "a symbolic Eucharistic host." The painting "seems to me a totally surrendered Lord who draws us into this holy sacrifice."